The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting, and Literature.

• Author: Van Seters, John
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

The Deuteronomic School: History, Social Setting, and Literature. By RAYMOND F. PERSON, JR. SBL Studies in Biblical Literature, vol. 2. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2002. Pp. x + 175. $29.95 (paper).

This little book tries bravely to solve the current disarray in the study of Deuteronomistic literature and its many diverse problems, with its new theory of a "Deuteronomic school" as an all-encompassing scribal guild arising in the Babylonian exile and dominating the bureaucratic and literary output of the Persian-period community in Judah until its demise in the time of Ezra when a new "scribal school" replaced it. The Deuteronomic school was responsible for the composition of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic History (Noth's DtrH), and the editing of Jeremiah, as well as the successive "redaction" of this corpus and its preservation and scribal transmission to later times. Nevertheless, its consistency of language and theological perspective is such that it is scarcely possible, in Person's view, to distinguish discrete redactional levels or date the texts more closely within the century and a half of the school's domination. Even the older distinction between "Deuteronomic" as pertaining to the basic text of Deuteronomy and "Deuteronomistic" as that which is related to the history from Joshua to 2 Kings is rejected. Hence the designation "Deuteronomic school." All the current redactional histories of DtrH are replaced by this simple, undifferentiated Deuteronomic school that includes everything that can be attributed to the Deuteronomistic corpus. Can this thesis be sustained by the arguments Person uses to support it? The answer, quite frankly, is that it cannot.

First, in defining the term "Deuteronomic" Person says nothing about the roots of this ideology in the reform of the Josiah period and the relationship of those responsible for it to the "school" that was created in the Babylonian exile. The problem of the origins of Deuteronomy would seem to be relevant to any explanation for how this "school" arose, but there is scarcely anything said about Deuteronomy except for brief comments on a few late redactional additions. The roots of the school are seen merely in the pre-exilic state bureaucracy and some records and sources that they managed to preserve when they went into exile in Babylon.

Second, Person understands the term "Deuteronomic school" in at least two quite different senses. It is viewed as a kind of closed...